Friends – During this time of enforced isolation, we have different ways of reaching out to friends near and far. I’m a fan of the old way, telephone, though I sometimes text and I’m very active on e-mail.

Friends – Since my long-ago college days, I’ve believed that my wealth was invested in friends. People with whom I’d shared experiences and interests. I’ve been lucky over the years to have a number of good friends scattered all over the globe. Unfortunately, as I’ve written somewhere else, I’ve lost touch with a number of them. Some of you are kindly reading my thoughts on this blog.

Friends – What you give is what you get. I’ve been luckily on the receiving end of a bunch of stuff from people I’ve known; our home is filled with it. I’ve also shared stuff with the people with whom I’ve crossed paths. It’s never a question of quid pro quo, rather something from the heart.

In the past year or so two local, long-time friends have shared so much with me. Goodness, we’ve lived here about twenty-one years. One is a fellow museum professional with whom I worked in my job here. He left the museum before me for a variety of other museum setting. Now he’s well ensconced in a really amazing position.

He knew that I collect foreign dolls. I guess he was doing a Marie Kondo and cleaning out his apartment; a new home had to be found for Opa and Oma de Smet, two amazing hand-made dolls in the traditional costume of the town of Axel, in Zeeland. They were made by Mevr. Maria de Smet – van Gremberghe, the grandmother of my friend’s friend. Opa and Oma now live happily on a shelf with a number of hand-made Native American dolls I’ve been lucky to acquire. For more on the regional dress, watch – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKvgpcKQB5g.

I crossed paths with another local friend when I got involved in our local American Cancer Society Relay for Life about seventeen years ago. I was survivor chair of the Relay twice and she helped me put my program for the day into effect. Her family is a long-established community family. She is immensely generous in terms of fund raising, giving money, and networking. One of the activities that she’s arranged for many years is the annual Swim with the Dolphins for breast cancer survivors at one of our local attractions. This past October, my schedule was clear and I could take part – what an experience!

Well, they both know that I’d made breast cancer quilts out of my huge stack of cancer walk t-shirts (see October 21 post). Several times, I had offered to transform their t-shirts into quilts. From the end of last year until about month or so ago, I put aside time to make it happen.

Both of these quilts had issues. The main one was that some of the images on the shirts were not uniform. Careful piecing was necessary to try to make sure the strips were the same length. When they were not, I found some small remnants to fill the space creatively.

Several steps are needed to complete this relatively easy project.

Step one – Lay out the shirts on a large space (like a large bed) to see how you want to arrange them. And rearrange them.

Step two – Cut out the images you plan to use. You can back them with interfacing or not (internet instructions vary on this step of the process).

Step three – Sew the images of each individual vertical strip together.

Step four – Sew the strips together, carefully

Step five – Sew on the backing, this quilt shouted flamingos!

Final step – In our sub-tropical area, I don’t insert batting, it would make the quilt much to warm. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to sew the top to the backing. There are two primary ways to finish a quilt. One is to “quilt” it, that is to sew the backing to the pieced front following or creating a pattern with the stitching. The other is to tie the top to the bottom at corners or areas where the pattern meets. I use a coordination color of embroidery floss to finish my tie quilts .

Quilt number two had the same issues as number one – the different sizes of images:

Crafting has always been a labor of love. There are so many ways to show friends that you care for and appreciate them. These are just a few of mine. Take care of yourself, your family, … and your friends (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Iwmcs1hps) now and … always